Matters were rather better at the Marshalsea. This very ancient prison, which stood in the High Street, Southwark, was used for debtors arrested for the lowest sums within twelve miles of the palace of Whitehall; also for prisoners committed by the Admiralty Court. At one time the Marshalsea was the receptacle of pirates, but none were committed to it after 1789. The court of the Marshalsea was instituted by Charles I. in the sixth year of his reign, to be held before the steward of the royal household, the knight marshal, and the steward of the court, with jurisdiction to hold pleas in all actions within the prescribed limits. The court was chiefly used for the recovery of small debts under £10, but its business was much reduced by the extension of the Courts of Conscience. The prison was a nest of abuses, like its neighbour the King’s Bench, and came under the strong animadversion of the Gaol Committee of 1729. As the business of the Marshalsea Court declined, the numbers in its prison diminished. The population, as reported by the committee in 1814, averaged about sixty, and the prison, although wives and children resided within the walls, was not overcrowded. Their conduct too was orderly on the whole. Drunkenness was not common, chiefly because liquor was not to be had freely, although the tapster paid a rent of two guineas a week for permission to sell it. The inmates, who euphemistically styled themselves “collegians,” were governed by rules which they themselves had framed, and under which subscriptions were levied and fines imposed for conduct disapproved of by the “college.” A court of the collegians was held every Monday to manage its affairs, at which all prisoners were required to attend. A committee of collegians was elected to act as the executive, also a secretary or accountant to receive monies and keep books, and a master of the ale-room, who kept this the scene of their revels clean, and saw that boiling water was provided for grog. Bad language, quarrelling, throwing water over one another was forbidden on pain of fine and being sent to Coventry; but the prevailing moral tone may be guessed from the penalty inflicted upon persons singing obscene songs before nine p.m. Yet the public opinion of the whole body seems to have checked dissipation. The poorer prisoners were not in abject want, as in other prisons, owing to many charitable gifts and bequests, which included annual donations from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Steward of the Household, the steward and officers of the Marshalsea Court, and others. Legacies had also been left to free a certain number of debtors, notably that of £100 per annum left by a Mr. Henry Allnutt, who was long a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and came into a fortune while there. His bequest, which was charged upon his manor at Goring, Oxon, and hence called the Oxford Charity, was applied only to the release of poor debtors whom £4 each could free. The supreme control of the Marshalsea was vested in the marshal of the royal household; but although he drew a salary of £500 a year, he did nothing beyond visiting the prison occasionally, and left the administration to the deputy marshal. The latter’s salary, with fees, the rent of the tap and of the chandler’s shop, amounted to about £600 a year.
The compters of Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough were discontinued as debtors’ prisons (as was Newgate also) on the opening of Whitecross prison for debtors in 1815. Ludgate to the last was the debtors’ prison for freemen of the city of London, clergymen, proctors, attorneys, and persons specially selected by the Corporation. At one time the Ludgate debtors, accompanied by the keeper, went outside and beyond the prison to call on their creditors, and try to arrange their debts, but this practice was discontinued. There were fifteen rooms of various sizes, and as the numbers imprisoned rarely exceeded five-and-twenty, the place was never overcrowded, while the funds of several bequests and charities were applied in adding to the material comfort of the prisoners. The Giltspur Street Compter received sheriffs’ debtors, also felons, vagrants, and night charges. It was generally crowded, as debtors who would have gone to the Poultry Compter were sent to Giltspur Street when the former was condemned as unfit to receive prisoners.[35] The demands for fees were excessive in Giltspur Street. Those who could not pay were thrown into the wards with the night charges, and denied admission to the “charity wards,” which partook of all the benefits of bequests and donations to poor debtors. The Borough Compter was in a disgraceful state to the last. The men’s ward had an earth, or rather a mud, floor, and was so unfit to sleep on that it had not been used for many years, so that the men and women associated together indiscriminately. The rooms had no fireplaces, so it mattered little that no coals were allowed. There were no beds or bedding, no straw even. In one room Mr. Neild found a woman ill of a flux shut up with three men; the latter raised eighteenpence among them to pay for a truss of straw for the poor woman to lie on. Neild found the prisoners in the Borough Compter ragged, starving, and dirty.
I come now to the debtors in Newgate. The quarters they occupied were divided, as I have said,[36] into three principal divisions—the master’s side, the cabin side, and the common side. Payment of a fee of 3s. gained the debtor admission to the two first named; those who could pay nothing went, as a matter of course, to the common side; a further fee was, however, demanded from the new-comer before he was made free of either the master’s or the cabin side. This was the reprehensible claim for “garnish,” which had already been abolished in all well-conducted prisons, but which still was demanded in Newgate. Garnish on the cabin side was a guinea at entrance for coals, candles, brooms, &c., and a gallon of beer on discharge; on the master’s side it was thirteen and fourpence, and a gallon of beer on entrance, although Mr. Newman, in his evidence in 1814, said it was more, and gave the garnish for the common side at that sum, which is five shillings more than Mr. Neild says was extorted on the common side. Numerous tyrannies were practised on all who would not and could not pay the garnish. They were made to wash and swab the ward, or they were shut out from the ward fireplace, and forbidden to pass a chalked line drawn on the floor, and so were unable either to warm themselves or to cook their food. Besides these fees, legitimate and illegitimate, there were others which must be paid before release. The sheriff demanded 4s. 6d. for his liberate, the gaoler 6s. 10d. more, and the turnkey 2s.; and thus when the debtor’s debt had been actually paid, or when he had abandoned his property to the creditors, and, almost destitute, looked forward to his liberty, he was still delayed until he had paid a new debt arising “only out of a satisfaction of all his former debts.” The fees were not always extorted, it is true; nor was non-payment made a pretext for further imprisonment, thanks to the humanity of the gaoler, or the funds provided by various charities.
There was this much honest forbearance in Newgate in these days, that debtors who could afford the cabin and master’s side were not permitted to share in the prison charities. These were lumped together into a general fund, and a calculation made as to the amount that might be expended per week from the whole sum, so that the latter might last out the year. It generally ran to about six pounds per week. The money, which at one time had been distributed quarterly, and all went in drink, was after 1807, through the exertions of the keeper[37] of the gaol, spent in the purchase of necessaries. But this weekly pittance did not go far when the debtors’ side was crowded, as it often was; notably as when numbers filled Newgate in anticipation of Lord Redesdale’s bill for insolvent debtors, and there were as many as three hundred and fifty prisoners in at one time. The city also allowed the poor debtors fourteen ounces of bread daily, and their share of eight stone of meat, an allowance which never varied, issued once a week, and divided as far as it would go—a very precarious and uncertain ration. The bread was issued every alternate day; and while some prisoners often ate their whole allowance at once, others who arrived just after the time of distribution were often forty-eight hours without food. The latter might also be six days without meat. Share in the weekly allowance of meat might also be denied to debtors who had not paid “garnish,” as well as in the weekly grant from the charitable fund. Hence starvation stared many in the face,[38] unless friends from outside came to their assistance, or the keeper made them a special grant of 6d. per diem out of the common stock; or the sixpenny allowance was claimed for the creditors, which seldom happened, owing to the expense the process entailed. The poor debtors were not supplied with beds. Those who could pay the price might hire them from each other, or from persons who made a trade of it, or they might bring their beds with them into the prison. Failing any of these methods, seeing that straw was forbidden for fear of fire, they had to be satisfied with a couple of the rugs provided by the city, the supply of which was, however, limited, and there were not always enough to give bedding to all. The stock was diminished by theft; female visitors carried them out of the prisons, or the debtors destroyed them when the weather was warm, and they were not in great demand, in order to convert them into mop-heads or cleaning-rags. Sometimes rugs were urgently required and not forthcoming; a severe winter set in, the new stock had not been supplied by the contractors, and the poor debtors perished of cold. Again, there was no regular allowance of fuel. Coals were purchased out of the garnish money and the charitable fund; so were candles, salt, pepper, mops and brooms. But the latter could have been of little service. Dirt prevailed everywhere; indeed the place, with its oak floors caulked with pitch, and smoked ceilings, could not be made even to look clean while there was no obligation of personal cleanliness on individuals, who often came into the prison in filthy rags. Only now and again, in extreme cases, an unusually nasty companion was stripped, haled to the pump, and left under it in a state of nature until he was washed clean.
The squalor and uncleanness of the debtors’ side was intensified by constant overcrowding. Prisoners were committed to it quite without reference to its capacity. No remonstrance was attended to, no steps taken to reduce the number of committals, and the governor was obliged to utilize the chapel as a day and night room. Besides this, although the families of debtors were no longer permitted to live with them inside the gaol, hundreds of women and children came in every morning to spend the day there, and there was no limitation whatever to the numbers of visitors admitted to the debtors’ side. Friends arrived about nine a.m., and went out at nine p.m., when as many as two hundred visitors have been observed leaving the debtors’ yards at one time. The day passed in revelry and drunkenness. Although spirituous liquors were forbidden, wine and beer might be had in any quantity, the only limitation being that not more than one bottle of wine or one quart of beer could be issued at one time. No account was taken of the amount of liquors admitted in one day, and debtors might practically have as much as they liked, if they could only pay for it. No attempt was made to check drunkenness, beyond the penalty of shutting out friends from any ward in which a prisoner exceeded. Quarrelling among the debtors was not unfrequent. Blows were struck, and fights often ensued. For this and other acts of misconduct there was the discipline of the refractory ward, or “strong room” on the debtors’ side. Bad cases were removed to a cell on the felons’ side, and here they were locked in solitary confinement for three days at a time.
Order throughout the debtors’ side was preserved and discipline maintained by a system open to grave abuses, and which had the prescription of long usage, and which was never wholly rooted out for many years to come. This was the pernicious plan of governing by prisoners, or of setting a favoured few in authority over the many. The head of the debtors’ prison was a prisoner called the steward, who was chosen by the whole body from six whom the keeper nominated. This steward was practically supreme. All the allowances of food passed through his hands; he had the control of the poor-box for chance charities, he collected the garnish money, and distributed the weekly grant from the prison charitable fund. In the latter duties he was, however, supervised by three auditors, freely chosen by the prisoners among themselves. The auditors were paid a shilling each for their services each time the poor-box was opened. The steward was also remunerated for his trouble. He had a double allowance of bread, deducted, of course, from the already too limited portion of the rest, and no doubt made the meat also pay toll. Under the steward there were captains of wards, chosen in the same way, and performing analogous duties. These subordinate chiefs were also rewarded out of the scanty prison rations. The same system was extended to the criminal side, and cases were on record of the place of wardsman being sold for considerable sums. So valuable were they deemed, that as much as fifty guineas was offered to the keeper for the post.
Enough has been said, probably, to prove that there was room for improvement in the condition and treatment of debtors in the prisons of the city of London. This gradually was forced upon the consciousness of the Corporation, and about 1812 application was made to Parliament for funds to build a new debtors’ prison. Authority was given to raise money on the Orphans’ Fund to the extent of £90,000. A site was purchased between Red Lion and White Cross streets, and a new prison planned, which would accommodate the inmates of Newgate and of the three compters, Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Poultry, or about four hundred and seventy-six in all. The evils of association for these debtors were perpetuated, although the plan provided for the separation of the various contingents committed to it. There was no lack of air and light for the new gaol, and several exercising yards. The completion of this very necessary building was, however, much delayed for want of funds, and it was not ready to relieve Newgate till late in 1815. The reforms which were to be attempted in that prison, more particularly as regarded the classification of prisoners, and which were dependent on the space to be gained by the removal of the debtors, could not be carried out till then. It is to be feared that long after the opening of White Cross Street prison, Newgate continued to be a reproach to those responsible for its management.
I pass now to the criminal side of Newgate, which consisted of the six quarters or yards already enumerated and described.[39] The inmates of this part, as distinguished from the debtors, were comprised in four classes:—(1) those awaiting trial; (2) persons under sentence of imprisonment for a fixed period, or until they shall have paid certain fines; (3) transports awaiting removal to the colonies, and (4) capital convicts, condemned to death and awaiting execution. At one time the whole of these different categories were thrown together pell-mell, young and old, the untried with the convicted. An imperfect attempt at classification was, however, made in 1812, and a yard was as far as possible set apart for the untried, or class (1), with whom, under the imperious demand for accommodation, were also associated the misdemeanants, or class (2). This was the chapel yard, with its five wards, which were calculated to hold seventy prisoners, but often held many more. A further sub-classification was attempted by separating at night those charged with misdemeanours from those charged with felony, but all mingled freely during the day in the yard. The sleeping accommodation in the chapel-yard wards, and indeed throughout the prison, consisted of a barrack bed, which was a wooden flooring on a slightly inclined plane, with a beam running across the top to serve as a pillow. No beds were issued, only two rugs per prisoner. When each sleeper had the full lateral space allotted to him, it amounted to one foot and a half on the barrack bed; but when the ward was obliged to accommodate double the ordinary number, as was frequently the case, the sleepers covered the entire floor, with the exception of a passage in the middle. All the misdemeanants, whatever their offence, were lodged in this chapel ward. As many various and, according to our ideas, heinous crimes came under this head, in the then existing state of the law, the man guilty of a common assault found himself side by side with the fraudulent, or others who had attempted abominable crimes. In this heterogeneous society were also thrown the unfortunate journalists to whom I have already referred,[40] and on whom imprisonment in Newgate was frequently adjudged for so-called libels, or too out-spoken comments in print. It was particularly recommended by the Committee on Gaols in 1814 that some other and less mixed prison should be used for the confinement of persons convicted of libels. But this suggestion was ignored. Indeed the partial classification attempted seems to have been abandoned within a year or two. The Hon. H. G. Bennet, who visited Newgate in 1817, saw in one yard, in a total of seventy-two prisoners, thirty-five tried and thirty-seven untried. Of the former, three were transports for life, four for fourteen years, and three of them persons sentenced to fines or short imprisonment—one for little more than a month. Two of the untried were for murder, and several for house-breaking and highway robbery. Nor were the misdemeanants and bail prisoners any longer separated from those whose crimes were of a more serious character. Mr. Bennet refers to a gentleman confined for want of bail, who occupied a room with five others—two committed by the Bankruptcy Commissioner, one for perjury, and two transports. Persons convicted of publishing libels were still immured in the same rooms with transports and felons.
The middle yard, as far as its limits would permit, was appropriated to felons and transports. The wards here were generally very crowded. Each ward was calculated to hold twenty-four, allowing each individual one foot and a half; “a common-sized man,” says the keeper, Mr. Newman, “can turn in nineteen inches.”[41] These twenty-four could just sleep on the barrack bed; when the number was higher, and it often rose to forty, the surplus had to sleep on the floor. The crowding was in consequence of the delay in removing transports. These often remained in Newgate for six months, sometimes a year, in some cases longer; in one, for seven years—that of a man sentenced to death, for whom great interest had been made, but whom it was not thought right to pardon. Occasionally the transports made themselves so useful in the gaol that they were passed over. Mr. Newman admitted that he had petitioned that certain “trusty men” might be left in the gaol. Constantly associated with these convicted felons were numbers of juveniles, infants of tender years. There were frequently in the middle yard seven or eight children, the youngest barely nine, the oldest only twelve or thirteen, exposed to all the contaminating influences of the place. Mr. Bennet mentions also the case of young men of better stamp, clerks in city offices, and youths of good parentage, “in this dreadful situation,” who had been rescued from the hulks through the kindness and attention of the Secretary of State. “Yet they had been long enough,” he goes on to say, “in the prison associated with the lowest and vilest criminals, with convicts of all ages and characters, to render it next to impossible but that, with the obliteration of all sense of self-respect, the inevitable consequence of such a situation, their morals must have been destroyed; and though distress or the seduction of others might have led to the commission of this their first offence, yet the society they were driven to live in, the language they daily heard, and the lessons they were taught in this academy, must have had a tendency to turn them into the world hardened and accomplished in the ways of vice and crime.”
Mr. Buxton, in the work already quoted, instances another grievous case of the horrors of indiscriminate association in Newgate. It was that of a person “who practised in the law, and who was connected by marriage with some very respectable families. Having been committed to Clerkenwell, he was sent on to Newgate in a coach, handcuffed to a noted house-breaker, who was afterwards cast for death. The first night in Newgate, and for the subsequent fortnight, he slept in the same bed with a highwayman on one side, and a man charged with murder on the other. Spirits were freely introduced, and although he at first abstained, he found he must adopt the manners of his companions, or that his life would be in danger. They viewed him with some suspicion, as one of whom they knew nothing. He was in consequence put out of the protection of their internal law.” Their code was a subject of some curiosity. When any prisoner committed an offence against the community or against an individual, he was tried by a court in the gaol. A prisoner, generally the oldest and most dexterous thief, was appointed judge, and a towel tied in knots was hung on each side in imitation of a wig. The judge sat in proper form; he was punctiliously styled “my lord.” A jury having been selected and duly sworn, the culprit was then arraigned. Justice, however, was not administered with absolute integrity. A bribe to the judge was certain to secure acquittal, and the neglect of the formality was as certainly followed by condemnation. Various punishments were inflicted, the heaviest of which was standing in the pillory. This was carried out by putting the criminal’s head through the legs of a chair, and stretching out his arms and tying them to the legs. The culprit was then compelled to carry the chair about with him. But all punishments might readily be commuted into a fine to be spent in gin for judge and jury.